3 pieces from Strange Tales — each retold in modern English and traced to its source.
A Daoist monk in rags asks a market merchant for a single pear. The merchant refuses — rudely, repeatedly. So the monk borrows a pip from a stranger's charity, plants it in the road, and grows a pear tree on the spot. The crowd gets the fruit. The merchant gets the lesson.
A butcher heading home with nothing but bones finds two wolves on his trail. He throws, they follow, and when the bones run out he has to think fast. A tight little fable about what happens when cunning meets a man who is just as cunning — and has a cleaver.
Xi Fangping's father dies cursing the rich neighbor who bribed hell's guards to beat him. Xi decides to go down there himself and plead the case — only to find that hell's courts are bought just as cheaply as the living ones.